Liability

Chapter 48 - Dmitri

WARNING! This chapter contains violence, murder, gore and a brief mention of underage nudity NOT in a sexual context, so if those topics trigger you in any way, please proceed with caution!

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Tuesday
September 25, 2018

24 hours.

They say that the first 24 hours are always crucial whether it is in the aftermath of a critical injury or the case of abduction. Dmitri and Thommy have now been missing for 24 hours and 28 minutes and their chance of being found alive is diminishing with each passing minute.

Dmitri runs a hand through his hair for what is probably the hundredth time in the past hour alone as he stares at the screens spread out in front of Sasha without a drop of care that he is going straight against his grandmother's orders. He tried to play by Alenyka's book, tried to obey like the good little soldier he is supposed to be but it is hard to follow a master who screws children over like they are useless pawns only good for being sacrificed in the quest of checkmating the opponent King. It chafes against the little boy in him who still adores his grandmother for taking him in and taking such good care of him after his parents' death.

He knows his grandmother loves him, just the same he loves Alenyka, but it is not the loving if at times strict grandmother who sent two untrained children on a death mission but the head of Yuriev Group. It might be a tad unhealthy to treat Alenyka as two separate people when in reality it is still Dmitri's own grandmother who exploited and probably sent Rhys and Thommy to their death but Dmitri is not ready to face reality.

Not yet.

Gritting his teeth, his hand clenches around Thommy's cracked phone, which they found in Goodman's disgustingly lavish condo after following the tracker embedded in it. The gadget taunts him, its fragile metal frame digging into his palm in accusation for allowing its owner to be kidnapped. It's obviously not Amelloni pulling the strings behind the scenes. The son of a bitch is still cooling his heels behind bars and, with his uncle refusing to move even a pinky to pay the exorbitantly high bail, even if he still could order his people to do his dirty work there would have been some news already.

But there has been nothing.

There is nothing.

Sasha has been combing through traffic camera recordings with nothing else to grasp onto but matching every car that left the forty-story building to a tenant or visitor is time-consuming. In the past day, even with the help of his minions, he only got through about half of the cars passing through the underground garage gates, none of which belonged to Goodman or someone not living in the building.

Using Goodman's phone has been a dead end as well, the device wiped clean and left behind in the apartment, placed on a sticky note with a winking smiley face drawn on it. The rat, or his master, clearly expected Alenyka's people to turn up, looking for him. Which meant that whoever was behind the whole thing knew that Rhys and Thommy have been recruited by Alenyka.

Which meant they have a mole.

At the moment Dmitri couldn't care less who betrayed them. Once he had Thommy and Rhys back safely, he will flush out the traitor then show them just how creative he could get when torturing someone not for information but as a means to an end.

"Mitya, I think I've got it!" Sasha exclaims suddenly, pulling Dmitri out of his thundering thoughts. "Here, that white mom van leaving at 5:42 pm."

"Why that one? Didn't you give it a pass before?"

"We did because we assumed that they would wait until later to move the boys." Sasha scratches the back of his neck. "Which, logical but apparently wrong. And if you think about it a bit, it's perfect. Who would think of stopping a car like that?"